155BK – BUSTER KEATON F24

Details

Description

THE SILENT FILMS OF BUSTER KEATON: CALIFORNIA SLAPSTICK AND THE INVENTION OF COMIC WORLDS

In a period of exceptional creativity between 1920 and 1928, Buster Keaton made 19 short and 10 feature-length comedies, establishing in the process an international reputation as one of the premier comedy film performers and directors of the era. Today many of these films are widely recognized as works of enduring cultural distinction.

Thanks to the vigorous efforts of film collectors and archivists to recover and restore all of Keaton’s silent comedies – itself a tale worth telling – we will have an opportunity in this class to view most of the films produced by Keaton’s independent company, as well as several earlier and later screen performances by Keaton and others that help to place his achievements in perspective.

Beyond the obvious pleasure of attending closely and carefully to these films, this course affords you an opportunity to sharpen your tools of critical analysis, and to deepen your understanding of silent screen comedy as an historical form with enduring social relevance. While our primary focus falls on the specific characteristics of Keaton’s inventive work behind and in front of the camera, our conversations will
be open to broader questions concerning the new technologies, geographies, temporalities, and cultural forms of industrial modernity that emerged in the early twentieth century, and their impact over subsequent decades.